Secretary of the Interior Doug Burgum has reignited MAGA’s fight with the pope.
Pope Leo XIV and Donald Trump have butted heads on a number of occasions during the president’s second term.
On Tuesday, Burgum reignited the feud when he criticized the pope’s latest comments on artificial intelligence.
“I didn’t know that tech editorializing was part of the role of being pope,” he said in an interview on Fox News.
Burgum was referring to Pope Leo’s 42,300-word papal encyclical, or open letter, where he urged world leaders to impose stronger oversight on the rapidly advancing technology, cautioning that governments and tech executives must prevent AI from creating “an inhumane and more unjust world.”
While stressing that AI is not inherently “antagonistic to humanity,” he warned that unchecked automation could trigger mass unemployment, describing such an outcome as “a true social calamity.”
Drawing on the biblical story of the Tower of Babel, the pope also warned against allowing enormous technological power to become concentrated in the hands of a small group of private actors.
He called for broader international cooperation to confront the humanitarian, environmental, and political risks tied to AI, including misinformation and the development of autonomous weapons.
The open letter, titled Magnifica Humanitas in a nod to his predecessor Pope Leo XIII’s groundbreaking 1891 encyclical, which, during the Industrial Revolution, advocated for safe working conditions and a broader distribution of wealth, was described by The Wall Street Journal as a “rebuke” of Trump and his close alignment with the AI industry.
Trump has publicly praised executives such as OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and brought influential Silicon Valley leaders—including Elon Musk and David Sacks—into advisory positions, shaping the administration’s approach to technology policy.
The president has also pursued an aggressively pro-industry approach to artificial intelligence since returning to office, signing multiple executive orders aimed at loosening federal oversight of the technology.
One measure sought to prevent individual states from imposing their own AI regulations, while the administration has also resisted calls for stricter limits on advanced and potentially high-risk AI systems.
Meanwhile, it is not the first time the pontiff, who is originally from Chicago, has publicly clashed with Trump.
He previously refused to join Trump’s ‘Board of Peace’ and has neglected to visit the U.S.
He has also criticized the administration’s invasion of Venezuela and Trump’s mass deportation push.
Trump and the head of the Catholic Church have also fallen out over the president’s vastly unpopular war in Iran, with Trump falsely claiming Pope Leo said Iran can have a nuclear weapon.
There is no record of Pope Leo ever suggesting Iran should be allowed to obtain a nuclear weapon.
On the contrary, he has repeatedly warned about the risks of nuclear escalation and consistently supported global nuclear disarmament efforts.
Responding to criticism from Trump, Leo said he won’t be silenced and will continue to oppose the war with Iran, a conflict he said was driven by a “delusion of omnipotence.”
“I have no fear of the Trump administration, or speaking out loudly of the message of the Gospel, which is what I believe I am here to do,” Leo said.
